Latin America on the basis of the way learning and upgrading occur, and on the related industrial organization that most frequently prevails. 13The categories are as follows:
1. Traditional manufacturing, mainly labor intensive and ‘‘traditional’’ technology industries such as textiles, footwear, tiles, and furniture;
2. Natural resource-based sectors (NRbased),implying the direct exploitation of natural resources, for example, copper, marble, fruit, etc.;
3. Complex products industries (COPs), including, among others, automobiles,
autocomponents and aircraft industries, ICT and consumer electronics;4. Specialized
suppliers, in our LA cases, essentially of these categories tends to have
a predominant learning and innovating behavior, in terms of main sources of technical
change, dependence on basic or applied research, modes of in-house innovation .,
‘‘routinized’’ versus large R&D laboratories), tacitness or codified nature of knowledge, scale and relevance of R&D activity, and appropriability of
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innovation(Table 1).
Traditional manufacturing and resource-based sectors are by far the most present in Latin America, and therefore especially relevant toour present aims of assessing SMEs’ potential for upgrading within clusters and value chains. Traditional manufacturing is defined as supplier dominated, because major process innovations are introduced by producers of inputs ., machinery, materials, etc.). Indeed, firm shave room to upgrade their products (and processes)by developing or imitating new products’ designs, often interacting with large buyers that increasingly play a role in shaping the design of final products and hence the specificities of the process of production (times, quality standards, and costs).
Natural resource-based sectors crucially rely on the advancement of basic and applied science, which, due to low appropriability conditions, is most often undertaken by public research institutes, possibly in connection with producers (farmers, breeders, etc.). 14 In these sectors, applied research is mainly carried out by input suppliers ., chemicals, machinery, etc.) which achieve economies of scale and appropriate the results of their research through patents. Complex products are defined as intensive products,
‘‘high cost, engineering-
subsystems, or constructs supplied by a unit of production’’ (Hobday, 1998), 15
where the local network is normally anchored to one ‘‘assembler,’’ which operates as
a leading firm characterized by high design and technological capabilities. To our aims, the relationships of local suppliers with these ‘‘anchors’’ may be crucial to
foster (or hinder) firms’ upgrading through technology and skill transfers (or the lack
of them).Scale-intensive firms typically lead complex product sectors (Bell & Pavitt,
1993), where the process of technical change is realized within an architectural set
(Henderson & Clark, 1990), and it is often incremental and modular. Among the Specialized Suppliers, we only consider software, which is typically
client driven. This is an especially promising sector for developing countries’ SMEs,
due to the low transport and physical capital costs and the high information intensity
of the sector, which moderates the importance of proximity to final markets and extends the scope for a deeper international division of labor. Moreover, the
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disintegration of some productive cycles, such as for example of telecommunications,
opens up new market niches with low entry barriers(Torrisi, 2003). However, at the
same time, the proximity of the market and of clients may crucially improve the development of design capabilities and thereby foster product/process up grading.
Thus, powerful pressures for cluste ring and globalization coexist in this sector.
The different learning patterns across these four groups of activities are expected to affect the process of upgrading of clusters in value chains. This paper also aims at analyzing with original empirical evidence whether—and how—the sectoral dimension influences this process in Latin America. 4. METHODOLOGY: COLLECTIONAND ANALYSIS OF DATA
This study is based on the collection of original data from 12 clusters in Latin America that have not hitherto been investigated, and on an extensive review of cluster studies available. The empirical analysis was carried out from September 2002 to June 2003 with the support of the Inter American Development Bank. An international team of 12 experts in Italy and in four LA countries collected and reviewed the empirical data. Desk and field studies were undertaken following the same methodology, which
involved field interviews with local firms, institutions, and observers, interviews with
foreign buyers and TNCs involved in the local cluster, and secondary sources such as
publications and Case studies were selected which fulfilled the following
conditions: (1) agglomeration: all cases show some degree of geographical SME
clustering; 17 (2) upgrading: the clusters selected have experienced some degree of
upgrading, of whatever nature ., product, process, functional, inter sectoral); and (3)
policy lessons: all cases offer relevant policy lessons for future experiences either in terms of successesor failures. A total of 40 case studies were selected forth is analysis. 18 The list of cases, albeit incomplete, is—to our knowledge—the largest available on which comparative
exercises have been carried out, and provides a good approximation to the reality of
clusters and value chains in LA. Thus, although it cannot claim to correspond to the
universe of clusters in the region, it represents a database that allows reasonable
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